Going “up” with your customer is what on-boarding is all about. Extending past the initial value proposition and showing them an even more valuable product or service is the hallmark of a successful program. The key to lasting retention is a customer who loves your product and service because it enhances their life. These three on-boarding tips can greatly increase your customer retention and customer satisfaction and create this kind of relationship.
1. Deliver Delight Early
Beyond the needs your service delivers, it should also deliver delight. It should be enjoyable and engaging beyond its useful function. This approach elevates your brand and offering beyond its technical features. Once you are able to move the customer to be engaged with your brand meanings, beyond the features of your product, retention becomes easier. It moves past a logical decision to leave your company; it becomes an emotional decision because of the joy you have delivered. Deliver delight early and often. Make your messages fun, and build excitement in the on-boarding process.
2. Track Usage and Incentivize
Incentives will help customers explore and understand all the aspects of your service with greater results. Building some page tracking engagement stats for your on-boarding process is critical to the measurement of its success. Once you have those measurements in place, you can put incentives in front of those goals. You should know from your predictive model what a high-retention customer looks like, and you want to model that interaction for your on-boarding process. Ideas could include giving credits for changing a password, or filling out a profile, or using a little known feature of your service. You could also introduce some personality of your company in this process. It’s critical to not stop uncovering aspects (i.e. benefits) of your service to your customer to increase retention in the long haul.
3. Spread It Out
Many on-boarding processes focus on a short duration on-boarding, in one or two weeks. Our natural inclination might be to make it quick and simple, but no one can retain a lot of information in a blast of emails on a daily basis. Spreading your on-boarding process out gives a customer time to reflect on what you are showing them, and keeps the service at the top of their minds. It also allows your on-boarding to be reactive, and train them based on what they have not done yet. It allows you to be relevant, not just pushing a program. Creating various outcomes of on-boarding processes might help you understand and develop various types of high-value customers. It’s not about one-size fitting all, but that the fit feels amazing to your customer.
